


depths of love and loyalty

by Emmar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 17:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2396558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmar/pseuds/Emmar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Peter is not, in fact, a traitor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's official: I can't write angst. It just ends up really fluffy. Also, I continue in my trend of putting Severus Snape into situations where he's forced to be a better man. I'd apologise except I'm not sorry at all.
> 
> Feel free to play around in this 'verse if you like!

Sirius is going to kill him. He’s going to find that little rat and take him to pieces as slowly and as painfully as possible.

He apparates into Peter’s living room (it’s a miracle he hasn’t splinched himself halfway across the country) and it takes him a long moment to realise that the mass of flesh and blood sobbing on the floor in front of the couch is actually Peter. It’s like being stuck with a pin: All the righteous, grieving rage drains out of him and he tries to cast a messenger patronus once, twice, three times and gets nothing but mist because his first and best friend is _dead_ , there are _no more happy memories_ , he doesn’t think he’s ever going to be happy again.

"Pete," he manages, and Peter makes this awful wet hiccuping sound, and Sirius fumbles for the emergency portkey Dumbledore had always insisted they keep on them and puts his hand on the top of Peter’s head, the least-bloody part of him he can see, and whisks the pair of them away to Hogwarts’ hospital wing.

Pomphrey, Merlin bless her heart, doesn’t so much as blink when they land in a snotty heap on her polished floor, just levitates them to separate beds with a flick of her wand and starts firing off diagnostic charms.

"Remus," Sirius says, "I need you to get Remus for me, _please_.”  
Pomphrey takes a long, hard look at him before she summons her adder patronus and sends it off with a short missive that slips by Sirius’ scattered attention, and then turns her attention back to Peter. Remus pops into the hospital wing maybe as long as thirty seconds later, looking as healthy as he ever does.

"Sirius?"  
"I—" he says, and then shuts his mouth again, throat tight. "James— We switched," he manages finally, and Remus looks from him to the mess in the next bed and sits down heavily.  
"You thought it was me," says Remus faintly, and Sirius can’t help the wounded noise he makes as he puts his head down in his hands.  
"I don’t know what to do," he admits, ever so quietly, and beside him Remus sighs that sigh of his, that quiet, _I have a really stupid idea_ sigh.

"Where’s Harry?" is what he says.  
"Uh, I— gave him to Hagrid. And my bike."  
"You _what_?”  
"I’m really sorry if my brain isn’t functioning properly right now, Moony, but my best friend and his wife are _dead_!”

Remus takes a deep breath, the way he does when he wants to yell, and lets it out again slowly. “No, it’s okay, Pads, I’m sorry. …Your uncle left you a house, right?”  
"What?" says Sirius, eloquently.  
"None of our flats are big enough for the three of us and a baby," Remus says, like it’s obvious.  
"Oh," says Sirius. "Yeah, he did. But— do you think Dumbledore will—"  
"It isn’t his choice, Sirius. Is that where Hagrid’s taking Harry?"  
"That’s what he said. Why?"  
"…Petunia."  
” _What_.”  
"You know how strong blood wards have the potential to be, Pads, he’ll take Harry where he thinks he’ll be safest."  
"And that’s Lily’s _bitch sister_? You’ve got to be fucking _kidding_ me—”  
"We’ll take him. We’ll— we’ll wait until they’ve dropped him off and just… go and get him. Petunia isn’t going to want to keep him anyway, not a freak like her sister.”

Remus looks up suddenly, into the piercing gaze of Poppy Pomphrey, and blushes right down to his collarbones. “I, uh, don’t suppose I could ask you to keep that to yourself, Madam?”  
"I haven’t heard a thing," she says, catching a summoned potion vial without looking away from them. "But before either of you go haring off on this damn fool plan of yours, you need to rest. Here."

Sirius looks up into Remus’ tired eyes and huffs out a breath, and then the two of them clink their vials of Dreamless Sleep together and drink.

As the grandfather clock begins to toll midnight, Poppy Pomphrey lays them on seperate beds and three boys are no longer boys, but young men, and she can only hope Harry will keep them from drowning in their grief.


	2. Chapter 2

At quarter to ten on the morning of the first of November, somebody knocks on Petunia Dursley’s door.

“Hullo, Mrs Dursley,” says the young man, looking worn and tired, and Petunia eyes his ragged argyle jumper with distaste.  
“Can I help you?”  
“Yes,” he says, smiling sadly. “And I think I can help you, too. I’m here for Harry.”

Petunia goes very still, eyes narrowed, but he just keeps on smiling.

“How do you know--”  
“Does it really matter? I know you don’t want him, and his _godfather_ does, so…”

She purses her lips and nods once, sharply, and then goes into the living room and picks up the basket, holding it out at arm’s length. When she gets back to the front door and hands it to the man, his face lights up, and she’s dimly glad that at least _someone_ wants to look after the child. The man takes a look up and down the street and then glances back to her and says, “I’m sorry about Lily,” and then he turns on his heel and vanishes with a sharp crack.


	3. Chapter 3

Peter doesn’t know what day it is when he finally wakes up, but mostly he’s just glad he does. Except--

“They’re dead, aren’t they?”

In a chair beside his bed, Sirius nods, slowly. “James, yeah. And Lily.”  
“Harry?”  
“Here,” says Remus, from the doorway, baby in his arms, and a weight seems to lift off of Sirius’ shoulders. Peter musters up a tired, pained smile himself.  
“Good,” he manages, barely a whisper, and Remus perches on the edge of the bed and lays little Harry in the space between them.

\---

In the crush of moving furniture and picking bedrooms and buying baby things, the Unplottable house somehow gains a fifth occupant. It’s a week, maybe more, before Peter thinks to ask, “Why is Snape here?”

“Remus blackmailed him,” Sirius says, with vicious glee.  
“There _was_ an appeal to his better nature in there, too,” Remus protests, but then shrugs. “But it was mostly the blackmail, probably.”

Because Severus Snape has been stalking around, cleaning with single-minded fervour, carrying Harry around in the dead of night while the three of them try and sleep, and even mostly ignoring Sirius, which is more surprising than any of the other things combined. Whenever Sirius starts in - and he does, frequently, still so full of grief - Snape just covers his face with his hand and mutters under his breath for a minute and then stalks away. They all wait, on edge, for whatever revenge he’s sure to inflict, but when he finally does it’s better than Peter could ever have hoped for.

He hobbles into the kitchen, following Remus’ hysterical, unceasing laughter, to see Sirius in the doorway. _Literally_ in the doorway - it appears to have shrunk and trapped his head.

“I told him,” Remus says, wheezing, “that when he felt like hurting someone, to ask himself what Lily would do!”

Peter can’t help but start laughing, too, and eventually even Sirius joins in, helplessly. Snape swans past five minutes later to find them all still laughing, and smiles a sharp, but somehow entirely malice-free smile as he goes.

\---

The beautiful thing about living in a house that’s warded up to their ears is that the only member of the household really and truly inclined to violence against any of the others is, despite his teenage years, still every inch the pureblood scion, and so just hauling off and punching Snape in his over-large nose honestly never occurs to him.

\---

They may or may not slip Snape a sleeping potion the evening of the first full moon they all share. Nobody mentions it.

\---

The first time Harry calls any of them _dad_ (Snape, of all people, who spends the rest of the day somewhere between alarmed and nauseous) they sit him down and give him a very carefully-prepared speech about how none of them are actually his dad.

“Well, _yeah_ ,” eight-year-old Harry says, wrinkling his nose and holding out his little brown hands, “obviously, because you’re all really white and I’m, you know, not.”  
“Oh,” says Remus, faintly. “Well. Good.”  
“So long as you know,” adds Peter, whilst near the door Snape mutters something that sounds like _thank fuck for that_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whatever you think that last line is implying, you're probably right.

The house is full of photographs, but the most notable are these:

Four boys in red and gold ties, arms around each others’ shoulders, laughing and shoving.

A man with dark, messy hair wrapping his arms around his new wife, her red hair shining under her veil as she grins up at him.

The same red-head, much younger, arms linked with a skinny, scrawny boy with long greasy hair and a hooked nose who’s nonetheless smiling, though it’s an obviously unfamiliar expression to him.

A boy with his father’s hair and his mother’s eyes, two dark-haired men, one stood upright and one lounging, a sandy-haired man covered in scars, and a mousy blond man with a walking stick. They’re all five of them smiling at the camera.

\---

On the thirty-first of July, 1991, a newly-eleven-year-old boy comes careening into the fully-occupied kitchen of an Unplottable house, waving a thick parchment envelope, and shrieks, “ _Dads_ , my letter’s come!”

“Read it out, then,” says one of them, and he does:

“ _Cher Monsieur Potter…_ ”


End file.
